He never overwhelmed her with compliments, but he listened with
unfailing attention, remembered all her melodies and would sit humming
them to himself. While his imprisonment lasted indeed he passed hours in
her company, making her feel not unlike some unfriended artist who has
suddenly gained the opportunity to devote a fortnight to the study of a
great model. Euphemia studied with noiseless diligence what she supposed
to be the "character" of M. de Mauves, and the more she looked the more
fine lights and shades she seemed to behold in this masterpiece of
nature. M. de Mauves's character indeed, whether from a sense of being
so generously and intensely taken for granted, or for reasons which bid
graceful defiance to analysis, had never been so much on show, even to
the very casual critic lodged, as might be said, in an out-of-the-way
corner of it; it seemed really to reflect the purity of Euphemia's pious
opinion. There had been nothing especially to admire in the state of
mind in which he left Paris--a settled resolve to marry a young person
whose charms might or might not justify his sister's account of them,
but who was mistress, at the worst, of a couple of hundred thousand
francs a year. He had not counted out sentiment--if she pleased him so
much the better; but he had left a meagre margin for it and would hardly
have admitted that so excellent a match could be improved by it. He was
a robust and serene sceptic, and it was a singular fate for a man who
believed in nothing to be so tenderly believed in. What his original
faith had been he could hardly have told you, for as he came back to his
childhood's home to mend his fortunes by pretending to fall in love he
was a thoroughly perverse creature and overlaid with more corruptions
than a summer day's questioning of his conscience would have put to
flight. Ten years' pursuit of pleasure, which a bureau full of unpaid
bills was all he had to show for, had pretty well stifled the natural
lad whose violent will and generous temper might have been shaped by a
different pressure to some such showing as would have justified a